Mark Landsbaum: Jobs recovery worse than it seems

President Barack Obama understands that it's the economy. And he's not stupid. But he is sly, which is a polite way of saying, he doesn't tell the whole truth. The Obama administration, with an assist from compliant mainstream news outlets, doesn't dare come clean on economic matters. That could cost him his job in November.

The administration deceptively conceals from people the true monumental decline in the number of working Americans. Simultaneously, the White House misleadingly reduces the official unemployment rate using an accounting sleight of hand. Perhaps most egregious, the president pretends the worsening situation is improving, which is like telling passengers everything's peachy as the ship sinks.

All administrations engage in similar fast shuffles. But as deceptions go, Obama shows rare mastery.

"One of the highly developed talents of President Barack Obama is the ability to say things that are demonstrably false, and make them sound not only plausible but inspiring," economist Thomas Sowell writes. "On this and on many other issues, you would have to know what the facts are to know that he is lying. He is obviously counting on the fact that, in this era of dumbed-down education, many people have no clue as to what the facts are. He is also counting on something else – namely, that the pro-Obama media will not expose his lies. One of the many ways of lying smoothly is to simply redefine words. Barack Obama is a master at that as well."

One word Obama redefines is "unemployment." One might think that to be unemployed means simply to not have a job. Au contraire, says the White House.

The official unemployment rate, thanks to Obama's shell game, supposedly is 8.2 percent, unacceptably high, of course, but improving by tiny increments since hitting 10 percent in October 2009. It was 7.8 percent in January 2009 before Obama was sworn in.

The government counts people out of work in a way most people wouldn't. In fact, if out-of-work people get discouraged enough to quit looking for jobs, the government no longer considers them unemployed for purposes of that widely reported percentage. And it's that reported unemployment percentage that grabs headlines.

We wonder if the unemployed realize it's so easy to end their plight. Simply no longer look for work. Then they'd no longer be unemployed. At least by White House logic.

What would the unemployment rate look like if those workers were added back into the mix? Economist John Lott says if those who have given up looking for jobs and those who have settled for part-time work are included in the unemployment calculation, the unemployment rate actually is nearly 1 percent higher than the government's official statistic.

You, as a prospective voter, or, perhaps, as an unemployed person, might ask why the government doesn't use the higher rate. Get real. In an election year?

Is there a better measurement? How about the number of people actually with jobs?

You won't read this atop a White House press release. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports fewer Americans are working today than when Obama was sworn in: 132.7 million now versus 133.6 million in 2009. That's nearly a million fewer workers on the job.

Even by the government's carefully prepared (dare we say, "doctored?") numbers, there were 12.8 million unemployed in February compared with 11.6 million in January 2009 when the president took office. By Obama's own count, the number of people he considers unemployed increased by more than a million. Imagine what he could do with two terms in office.

Let's recap: Since Obama came to office, there are nearly 1 million fewer people on the job, and more than 1 million more people officially unemployed.

Then there is this: The number of unemployed Americans in January declined by a substantial amount: 339,000, a figure the administration trumpeted. But that decline occurred only because a shockingly larger number – almost 1.2 million additional Americans – were reclassified by the government in January as no longer being in the labor force.

"Unfortunately," economist Lott noted at the time, "that has been the consistent story that has made this 'recovery' unique, as more and more Americans have just given up looking for work."

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-San Diego, has introduced a resolution in the House he calls "the REAL Unemployment Calculation Act." It would require the federal government to use as its official unemployment calculation the statistic that includes people no longer looking for work.

Government statistics also show a meager 120,000 new jobs created in March. Most economists had predicted more than 200,000, and some estimate the nation requires about that many just to replace jobs that are ending and to accommodate new workers entering the market.

As disappointing as that was, there was worse news buried in the government report. Another 164,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force last month. These join the 1.2 million reported in January who had quit looking for work, and consequently are no longer counted when bureaucrats calculate the official unemployment rate.

March demonstrated in microcosm the perversity of the Obama job-counting scam. The government again reduced the pool of people in the job market by no longer counting some of the jobless, in that way permitting even a disappointing increase in new jobs to show an improvement in the unemployment rate. We guess that if they do enough of this, the nation theoretically could end up with no one left in the labor force but effectively achieve full employment. They could destroy the job market to save it.

"It is hard to celebrate a lower unemployment rate that is the direct result of fewer people actually working," noted Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families. "Yet this is the reality of Obama's economic 'recovery.'"

So, what's the real Obama jobs track record?

In 2009 he signed a stimulus package intended to create "or save" 4 million jobs and bring the unemployment rate down to 6 percent. The rate now is 8.2 percent, even by deceptive bookkeeping, and there are almost 1 million fewer people working.

Since January 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 5 million people have dropped out of the labor force, reportedly the greatest decline on record. Only 10 percent to 20 percent of those are young people opting to stay in school. The vast majority are people dropping out because they simply can't find jobs and have quit looking, says Brian Holte, economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

The labor force ranged from 66 percent to 67 percent of working-age Americans under the Clinton and both Bush administrations. It has declined to 63.7 percent this year, the lowest percentage in 29 years. That means one in three working-age Americans, 88 million in all, no longer are in the workforce.

The Gallup polling organization reported that people unemployed and working part time because full-time jobs were unavailable increased to 19 percent in February, compared with the previous month's 18.7 percent. The pollster also reported that 85 percent of small businesses surveyed said they are not looking for new workers – 48 percent of them because of concerns about rising health care costs and 46 percent citing as a primary reason the effects of government regulations.

Meanwhile, Obama's green-job revolution and its necessarily coercive regulations are killing, not creating, jobs and slowing, not stimulating, economic growth, according to a report by Bryan Leonard of State Budget Solutions. That's because "regulations necessarily increase costs for the private sector and even the best-designed subsidies misdirect money and capital from more productive uses," Leonard explains.

All this adds up to the worst economic recovery in history, according to Stanford professor Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisors from 2006-09.

"[T]he economy is growing stronger," Obama assured the nation in February. Facing reelection, he has to say so. The real numbers don't.

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